Knowing More as Knowing Less? Alternative Histories of Cost and Management Accounting in the U.S. And the U.K.

Abstract

In attempting to understand the genesis and scope of modern cost and management accounting systems, accounting historians adopting what has been labeled a “Foucauldian” approach have been rewriting the history of key 18th and 19th century developments in the U.K. and U.S. through new evidence, new interpretation, and a refocusing of attention on familiar events. This is a “disciplinary” history which sees modern cost and management accounting as articulating a new kind of “expert disciplinary knowledge,” as well as exercising a “disciplinary power,” in the construction of a new human accountability. However, this “disciplinary” view has been challenged by more “economic rationalist” historians, e.g., Boyns and Edwards [1996] for the British Industrial Revolution and Tyson [1998] for the U.S., as being too narrowly concerned with labor control. This paper takes up the gauntlet. It addresses the theoretical issues and seeks to clarify the import of the “disciplinary view” and its contribution to understanding how 19th century accounting practices shaped emerging managerial discourses, initially in the U.S. It argues that, until businesses adopted this new disciplinarity, there remained an absence of practices focused on calculating human performance, and accounting was not fully deployed to construct that system of “administrative coordination” [Chandler, 1977] which distinguishes modern management action and control.

Costing in the Newcastle Infirmary, 1840-1888

“…Boyns and Edwards (2013, p. 279) saw the industrial revolution as a period of continuing evolution in which businessmen devised practical costing solutions to provide them with the information they needed "for both routine issues, such as price fixing, contract tendering and monitoring/control purposes, as well as for more strategic decision making purposes". Despite the consistency of these studies regarding the significance of costing to decision-making in the industrial revolution, dissenting voices remain over how effective an aid it proved in practice, and indeed whether the costing calculations that have been interpreted by historians as designed to aid decisions were really intended to serve that purpose by the owners (Fleischman and Parker, 1997, p. 8;Miller and Napier 1993;Hoskin and Macve 2000). Bryer (2005), for example, argues that the Economic Rationalist School is mistaken to attribute decision-usefulness as a motive to cost accounts in this era when their true purpose was to align the mentality of the managers with that of the owners by providing the means by which the managers could be held accountable.…”

Fair Value vs Conservatism? Aspects of the History of Accounting, Auditing, Business and Finance from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China

“…The question is 'how much?'. It is therefore helpful to regard FAT and IFRS as 'powerful institutional rules which function as highly rationalised myths' (Meyer & Scott, 1992;McMillan, 1998) In these last two sections (3.3 and 3.4) I have argued for an alternative history, namely that a 'genealogy' of accounting and of the examination-as 'rational institutional myths' that are mutually supportive-traces their modern characteristic discourses and practices through a history of disciplinary power-knowledge (Hoskin & Macve, 2000;cf. Power, 2011) that cannot be reduced to rational evolution.…”

“…These unprecedented grammatocentric practices and discourses of norms, performance and accountability (Hoskin & Macve, 2000) became the modern internalized systems of control that 'quietly order us about' (Foucault, quoted by Megill, 1979).…”

“…This new power of 'human accountability' had not evolved in the British Industrial Revolution, even though accounting then embraced technological advances in assets and changes in the organization of and the accounting for labour costs ('piece rates' vs 'day rates') (Hoskin & Macve, 2000) as shown by studies of the C18 th Newcastle mines (Fleischman & Macve, 2002), of the C18th Carron Co ironworks (Toms, 2010;Fleischman & Macve 2012;cf. Bryer 2006) and in the early C19 th Boulton & Watt Soho foundry (Fleischman et al, 1995).…”

Asignación de gastos e ingresos como mecanismo de arbitraje

“…Se pueden citar dos líneas propuestas para llevar a cabo dicha ampliación. Por un lado, indagar en las razones sociales, políticas y organizativas que originaron la aparición de sistemas complejos de costes, cuestionando que la búsqueda de racionalidad económica fuera la causa principal (Fleischman y Tyson, 1993;Hoskin y Macve, 2000;Boyns y Edwards, 2000). Entre estas causas, no estrictamente económicas para el desarrollo de técnicas contables ya se ha mencionado el posible uso de la contabilidad como medio de arbitraje en conflictos entre partes con intereses contrapuestos.…”